Average home in Britain drops £7,500 in value over last year

Scotland has seen the best of it over the past year with average home values almost unchanged since October last year, having fallen a mere 0.05% (£83) on average to £162,335.

In England, only London and the South East have managed to record rises in property values over the past year, with the average London home now worth £409,348, up 1.1% (£4,255) from October 2010. In the South East, the average homeowner has seen a gain of £1,004 from one year ago with average house prices up 0.36% to £279,463. By contrast, homes in the North East have not fared nearly as well, dropping 7.7% (£13,136) in value over the same period. (See Table 1 for full regional stats).

London and Aberdeen top the list of the best performing cities as the only cities in Britain to record a rise in average house prices over the past year. In London average property prices have gained 1.1% and in Aberdeen they have climbed 0.3% during the last 12 months. At the other end of the scale, it’s not been a good year for homeowners in Northampton or Leicester which top the list of the worst performing areas and where average property prices have fallen by over 6% since last October (See Tables 2 and 3 for best/worst performing cities).

Nicholas Leeming of Zoopla.co.uk commented: “The contrast between the performance of the housing market in the South East and the North East over the past 12 months is stark. Unsurprisingly, London remains the best performing region in Britain. We are unlikely to see much of a rebound in the North whilst the first rung on the property ladder remains out of reach for many first-time buyers due to the near impossible task of securing a deposit and a mortgage.”